And Colin Firth should know...Despite making his
name as the brooding hero of Pride and Prejudice, the real man
is
an altogether happier chap. He tells Kate Bussmann why, in his
latest
role, he’s lightening up on screen, too.

Let’s get one thing
straight:
Colin Firth is not Mr Darcy. Women, he insists, have never fainted at
his
feet, and after thinking for a moment, he fails to remember a time,
since
Pride and Prejudice, that anyone has even come on to him.
Not that
he’s bothered by the association. Darcy is not an albatross around his
neck. In fact, he’s more bothered by the idea that people assume it is.
‘I don’t think I’ve given a single interview where I haven’t tried to
correct
that impression,’ he says, leaning back into his chair at London’s
Portobello
Hotel. It’s nearly a decade since Firth smouldered his way on to the
small
screen and into the nation’s consciousness, and Darcy, he say, ‘is
starting
to feel like an old school nickname that I’ve forgotten how I got. It’s
like living with an alter ego.’

The difference
between them,
though, is immediately obvious. Where Darcy sulked, Firth is easy
company,
funny, with a startlingly goofy laugh. The edges are softer on him: his
hair is lighter than you might imagine, he’s tall (6ft 1 in) but not
imposing,
and his sense of style is quintessentially English—a thrown-together
look
of suit jacket, jeans and a crumpled striped shirt. That famous
superior
frown does surface from time to time, but on the real man, it’s simply
concentration.

Neither is he as
posh as
you expect. Born 43 years ago to teacher parents, he describes his
family
as ‘middle class but never particularly wealthy.’

Even next to Hugh
Grant,
Michael Caine or Ralph Fiennes, Firth may well be the most English
actor
there is, so it may surprise you to learn that, sorry girls, he’s
happily
married to Italian documentary producer Livia Guiggioli. They met on
the
1996 BBC mini-series Nostromo and, for a while, divided their
time
between London and Livia’s native Rome. ‘I still don’t know if I’ve
ever
seen a city so beautiful. I haven’t seen them all,’ he deadpans. ‘Out
of
anywhere I’ve ever been, Italy is probably the place I get noticed
least.
It’s fantastic. I go there and assume that I’ll be able to, you know,
pick
my nose, or scratch myself, and not have any witnesses. But work was
always
based here [in England], and friends and family were always here, so it
was never my intention to uproot.

He and Livia now
live in
Islington with their two-year-old, the second of his two sons. The
first
boy was from his five-year relationship with actress Meg Tilly (his
co-star
in Valmont),. and who now lives with Tilly in Los Angeles. The
distance
is difficult, but they speak often and Firth sees him as much as he
can.
‘It’s something that I deal with. Obviously, you’d love to have your
children
around you.’

Not wanting to be
away from
his family is a factor that’s made him much choosier about the work he
takes, but in the case of his new film, Hope Springs, he says
that
he had ‘no hesitation’ in accepting the part. It’s a feather-light
romantic
comedy about an English artist who, jilted by his fiancée
(Minnie
Driver), finds himself in a small New England town, and soon falls for
a local kook, played by Heather Graham.

‘One of the
things I loved
about Hope Springs was that it was so wilfully slight. I found it
beautifully
put together. It felt like this fantastically well achieved piece of
paper
folding. It’s just got to be a big hit now to round it off as a happy
ending!’

Maybe it will,
but I find
him a less comfortable screen presence in comedy, as slapstick as this.
Firth disagrees.

‘If I think it
requires a
bit of prancing about, I’ll do it. You know, the only people that
smoulder
in real life are adolescents at parties. A real life smoulderer would
be
a very silly creature to behold.’ That said, Firth’s natural state is a
serious one. He talks passionately and knowledgeably about the issues
that
bother him—and there are many.

I ask whether he
ever feels
guilty about choosing a career as, well, frivolous as acting?
‘Absolutely.
Shame, I suppose, is a better word. My mother travels around
campaigning
to get asylum seekers out of detention and helping people in need. I
just
do miserable, token things, like getting the studios to donate money
from
premieres to charitable causes. Unless you use it in that kind of way,
fame is useless—except to get you a table in a restaurant.’ Does he
ever
do that? Use his celebrity to get an upgrade? He smirks, ‘Absolutely.
I’m
not political enough to insist on sitting in the luggage hold on a
long-haul
flight.’

A busy man, the
next 12 months
will see him plenty of roles, including the film version of Tracy
Chevalier’s
novel Girl With a Pearl Earring, and, possibly, a sequel to Bridget
Jones’s Diary.

‘If it’s a good
script. The
word is that Renée [Zellweger] is keen. She likes the character,
feels a real affinity with her.’

As the interview
comes to
an end, I ask whether his wife is back at work. There’s a slight
hesitation,
but he can’t help himself. ‘She’s a bit too pregnant to work—due in
July.
It’s a boy—don’t tend to do girls in my family.’ He breaks into the
sweetest
smile, and all trace of Darcy evaporates before my eyes.